Songs and sound. Guitars and stuff.

Tag Archives: The Winding Sheet

Mark Lanegan – his music, his voice, the whole bit – is one of my favourites. Dying Days is my Freebird, only better and shorter. I’ve written about him a couple of times before here, but I saw him live at Shepherd’s Bush last night, so you’re going to hear about him again, I’m afraid.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve seen him headlining before (at the Astoria, in maybe 2001) and he was in spectacularly grumpy form that night. His set was barely an hour long, there was no encore. He sang well, but seemed bored. Last night, arriving late with Mel and finding the place rammed, I was worried that maybe the lack of attention being paid to his chosen support act – his friend and collaborator Duke Garwood – would set him off, and it’d be the Astoria show again.

Instead Lanegan played an extensive, expansive, generously proportioned set that ranged widely through his solo career. It leaned heavily on his two most recent albums of original material – 2012’s Blues Funeral and 2014’s Phantom Radio – but contained highlights from as far back as Whiskey for the Holy Ghost (1994) and three killer tracks from his 2001 mid-career highpoint Field Songs.

I’ve said before that Lanegan’s acoustic records are my favourites, as they are the ones that give his voice most space to shine, showing off the rough grain of his knotted baritone and the ease with which he can still move up into his tenor range. So Dead on You, Low, One Way Street and Resurrection Song were probably my favourites from last night (Mel liked One Way Street the most). But there were other highlights: a clattering Gravedigger’s Song, startling in its volume and punch after an opening run where Lanegan sang with just one clean electric guitar for accompaniment; Hit the City, which I never liked much in its recorded form, but which Lanegan tore to shreds last night; Harvest Home and Torn Red Heart from the new album. His band acquitted themselves well on every song, the drummer especially across a set that require everything from jazzy brushed snare to sample-augmented disco, and the sound was adequate, with the vocal plainly audible throughout.

I’d love to see him play with an acoustic band at a small sit-down gig (the gothic-revival Union Chapel would seem an appropriate venue), and if he could find it within himself to do something from The Winding Sheet (Mockingbirds, please!), that would probably be my ideal Lanegan gig at this point. But in terms of playing a career-spanning set with an electric band in a biggish theatre show, with all the possible acoustical gremlins that entails, last night’s show was just about perfect.

Mark Lanegan is an unnervingly intense guy who’s made a lot of excellent heavy rock music, with his former band the Screaming Trees, with the Queens of the Stone Age/Desert Sessions guys and with Greg Dulli as the Gutter Twins. But it’s the stream of low-key, spare, acoustic solo albums he’s recorded over the years – the ones that give his voice the space to shine that it never had when it was fighting to make itself heard over the wall of guitar constructed by Gary Lee Connor and Josh Homme – that tell you the most about him as a singer. It’s on these records that you hear Lanegan’s full range as a vocalist, the rough grain of his knotted baritone, the surprising ease with which he moves up into the tenor range. He’s got the requisite technical gifts, but over the years he developed the emotional range to become a fine interpretive singer and a spellbinding singer-songwriter.

One of the chief pleasures of a Lanegan solo record for long-time alternative rock fans like me is to read the sleevenotes and see who’s guesting with him this time. Ben Shepherd from Soundgarden? Bill Reiflin from Ministry (and KMFDM, and later, surprisingly, R.E.M.)? Chris Goss from the Masters of Reality? Mike Johnson from Dinosaur Jr? Hell, even Duff McKagan, the bassist from Guns N’ Roses? All these just from 2001’s Field Songs alone, from which our chosen song today, Pill Hill Serenade, is taken.

Pill Hill Serenade has an Al Green kind of vibe to it, and there’s even a little hint of Otis Redding in there: the chord sequence, the 12/8 guitar arpeggios, the organ. It’s clearly derived from soul music, and ultimately from church music. Al could have sung this in his sweet falsetto. Otis might have built the intensity till he was stomping and roaring with preacher-man fervour. But possibly neither could have sung it with the same quiet intensity and tenderness that Lanegan does. In a career not short of fine vocal performances (Field Songs on its own offers up the sepulchral gravel of One Way Street, the wailing blues lament of Fix, and the tender Kimiko’s Dream House), Pill Hill Serenade may be his finest moment as a singer.

The song is included on his 3-disc retrospective Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1988–2011, which if you’re interested in catching up on nearly 25 years of solo Lanegan, may be the place to start. Although starting at the beginning with the skeletal but riveting The Winding Sheet and working through is an equally good idea; Nirvana fans who aren’t familiar with his solo debut will be interested to hear a guest Kurt Cobain vocal on Down in the Dark and the version of Where Did You Sleep Last Night featuring Cobain on guitar and Krist Novoselic on bass*.

Mark Lanegan promo pic, circa Field Songs

*In 1989 Cobain and Novoselic began playing heavy blues tunes with Lanegan and Screaming Trees drummer, leadbell Mark Pickerel, mining the Leadbelly catalogue for inspiration. Where Did You Sleep Last Night was from a Jury session at Reciprocal with Jack Endino recording. It ended up on Lanegan’s solo record once the band sputtered out. Ain’t It a Shame, with Cobain singing, came out on the Nirvana box set.